


aubade

by butterflyswimmer



Category: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni | Higurashi When They Cry
Genre: Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Happy Ending, Healing, Introspection, Post-Canon, Slice of Life, Spoilers, rika pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 04:59:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11306175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflyswimmer/pseuds/butterflyswimmer
Summary: There is no difficulty when you've already won.





	aubade

It had been Satoko’s idea. A celebration of sorts, just something small. Still, a tribute to their lives now, and going forwards.

 

As Satoko moves back and forth bringing out the food, Rika searches the shrine grounds for rocks. Earlier, they’d thrown open the cupboards and sent old blankets billowing into the air, plumes of dust filling the second floor of their shack. In the end, they’d needed three, and Rika was pinning them down now by the edges so they wouldn’t be picked up by the evening breeze.

 

Satoko surveys her work, wipes sweat from her brow. A feast, and Hinamizawa as its backdrop, caught in the tones of just one of the eternal evenings Rika knew so well. The days were long, the sky cycling through every colour of dusk as the sun made its way lazily toward the horizon. As the humidity left the air, the heat remained, the perfect embrace.

 

She hadn’t needed to be told more than once that Satoko didn’t want her help. Hanyuu had left in the morning, was spending tonight doing whatever it was she did - Rika still didn’t know - when they weren’t together. My role, she’d say. Watching over the people of this village. And just how well has that gone in the past? Rika had asked, smiled at the noises she got in response, not themselves knowing whether to be angry or embarrassed. It was cruel to tease her like this still, but that was how it’d always been. Besides, nothing carried the same weight any more, and Hanyuu had still turned, sunhat clutched in her hands to say it before she left - enjoy your evening, Rika. Hanyuu smiled more these days.

She’d spent most of the day, then, sitting. Watching the curtains billow in the breeze. Watching the sky, impossibly blue, and listening to Satoko clatter about the kitchen. They didn’t put the television on, and mostly didn’t talk. Rika had closed her eyes, and before she knew it, the cicadas had come. There was something impossibly happy about the sound, the arriving evening, her friend humming under her breath as she boiled water, or making a noise of delight after taste-testing something from one of the many pots she had going, or fetching her most treasured set of bowls - from her old house, with Satoshi - from the very top of the cupboard.

These simple sounds had carried her for so many years, before she’d known peace. To know now that she needn’t fear their cessation, needn’t fear the coming night, needn’t fear this would be just one more memory relegated to the haze of a thousandth final night - when she opened her eyes, she found they were damp.

 

“You did well, Satoko. Clap clap clap.”

 

The picnic is magnificent, if calling it that even did it justice. A multitude of dishes, the prized china Satoko had gotten out especially and jugs of home-brewed iced beverages, five places laid.

“Thanks, Rika.” It’s quiet, and Satoko fidgets. She’s smiling, but it’s not quite happy. Rika turns toward the sunset.

 

“Satoshi will be so happy.”

“Eh?”

“It’ll be the best meal he’s ever had.”

 

Satoko joins her. The breeze picks up the hem of her dress. She places her hands on the barrier, and Satoko’s join them. 

Satoko hadn’t wanted Rika’s help cooking that day. More than it being a meal for the two of them or even their friends, it was a promise. A resolution. One day she would welcome her brother home the same way. Just as Rika had always loved her for, she held that belief strong in her heart, hoping and preparing for the day he came back in equal measure.

Satoko had spent the last hundred years thinking she needed endure the same scars, waiting for her punishment to end.

It was a beautiful meal, however it tasted - it meant Satoko had learnt she needed to dress her wounds. They turn away, backs to the setting sun. The yard basks in the lazy sunlight. Rika goes to take her seat.

“Well, I’ll probably be a much better cook than this by the time he comes back.” Her friend sits beside her, pours a drink. Rika steals a glance.

“Only if you work hard enough.”

When Satoko looks at her, it’s her turn to turn away, smile quietly. She doesn’t need to explain her words. Even if Satoko doesn’t understand them, she’ll know Rika isn’t making fun of her.

There are only five places laid, as Shion had dropped out of the arrangements last minute - only Rika knew she’d been called to the clinic for a sudden update.

If only Satoko knew how soon what she was wishing for would come true. But she doesn’t need Rika to tell her that. The girl had learnt this lesson much, much sooner than she had, after all. Perhaps it was why she’d always been so dazzling in Rika’s eyes, as well as exactly what she needed.

“Satoshi will be home soon.” It slips out all the same, simple, and there’s still a moment where Rika stops herself, wonders whether she should say things she doesn’t quite know the truth of. But then Satoko’s turning to her, smiling that smile that nothing in the world knew how to break, answering in the affirmative, then doing a final round of taste-tests, fetching something excitedly from each bowl and plate in turn. Just like that.

Hope wouldn’t be hope if it had firm ground to stand on.

 

After everything, Satoko had said it to her. Far too many times - “I’m sorry.” Sorry I wasn’t there for you. Not at the end, not before, not in spirit, not in mind. Sorry I couldn’t save you. Sorry I never knew. Sorry, for everything.

If only she knew. But how could she?

Hanyuu had told her about the previous world. It had brought her so much joy to hear that story, even with its ending. They had saved her. She had saved Satoko. She had repaid her debt, at last. That was what it had felt like.

If only she knew. This is what she thinks, as she looks at her friend for the thousandth time that week, forever at a loss for the words that would communicate any of this. How could she possibly die before she’d even found those?

So, once again, she hugs her. Hugs her fiercely, buries her face in Satoko’s hair, breathes in the smell of home. The thing that had always anchored her, their conversation only a glimpse into how she was still here after all this time. A miracle, you could say, if you didn’t believe they were meant to find each other.

“Rika! You made me drop my food!”

“Not interrupting anything, are we?” And finally the chorus is complete, three sets of footsteps coming up the path, and Rika spends a few more seconds squeezing Satoko before she turns to see her friends, haloed by the erupting sunset.

“Absolutely, please go home, sirs.” She beams.

Mion lets out a low whistle. “Sorry for crashing the date, but you’re gonna need some help with that cartload of food. It looks great, Satoko!”

“Satoko-chan, you did all this?” Rena clasps her hands together in glee.

“Every last bit, sirs. She wouldn’t let me or Hanyuu in the kitchen all day, so you’d better all enjoy it. I do still have the power to incite Oyashiro-sama’s wrath!”

-

Most of them are sprawled across the floor by the end of it, either from food, or else thanks to Satoko’s kick in the side if you were Keiichi and had tried to steal the last of Rika’s favourite snacks. There’s silence for a few seconds, and they watch the last few clouds drift to their resting place before Rena speaks up.

“It’s really funny. I’m pretty sure we’ve never done this before - not since Keiichi-kun moved - but it feels so familiar.” She laughs. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I think it happened in one of my dreams.”

Mion props herself up on an elbow. “I was thinking the same.” A pause. “This was even more fun than the one in my dream though.”

Rika smiles, closes her eyes. “It definitely was.”

-

Everyone else is bringing in the dishes, and Keiichi and Rika are collecting up the blankets, folding them. He’s been quiet for a while.

“Are you okay, Keiichi…?”

“Me?” He stops what he’s doing, turns to her. “I was thinking about you, actually.”

She’s been quiet too. But that’s just Rika.

“Mii - What’s there to think about?” She peers up at him, but the creases in his brow only deepen.

“Well…” He trails off with a sigh. She gets that. How do you put any of this into words? “Are you really okay? After… like… everything?”

“I’m more okay than I’ve ever been, Keiichi.” She’s surprised to hear herself say it, more so to realise it’s true, but it is. She’s far from perfect - the fractured thing her mind is will never be that again - but that only makes her equal to every one of her friends, and every other human on this slowly revolving Earth. That was the price of living. It was one she was willing to pay, now she’d gotten her end of the deal.

Perfect, she wasn’t. But okay?

 

The sun is lava, melting, melding with the horizon. The whole village is aglow. It had been the same, all those nights she’d stood there, scissors in hand, before embarking on her task. Of course, by the time her and Akasaka had made it back, the sky was ashen. The moon had always shone so brightly that night. The more the years went by, the more mocking it had felt.

 

“Let’s go, Rika-chan.” She turns back, and Keiichi’s folded up the last of the blankets, has wrestled them under one arm to extend the other out to her.

In the burning light of the ending day, Keiichi’s fingers are within her grasp, and grasp them she does. She marvels at the simple warmth, lets it ground her, and when they reach the cool shack and Keiichi’s placed the blankets in a heap on the ground, she can’t resist grabbing his fingers the second they’re free and dancing round and round and round, until Keiichi’s gone from confused to laughing, and everybody watches on, understands but doesn’t. When she stops and collapses in a heap she looks up through her dizziness to see each of her friends’ faces, and for every line of worry or sorrow, they’re all here, bodies and beating hearts and everything they could ever need to overcome whatever lies ahead.

She’s still on the floor catching her breath, and everybody’s been distracted by Satoko showing off the TV they won at Watanagashi, the one they’re going to watch a movie on, now, and Hanyuu’s not there, and Rika speaks the very first words she ever has just for herself.

“I’m okay.”

-

The moths are coming out by the time they’ve set up the futons, fluttering about the light. The windows are still open wide, and Hinamizawa is alive with the sounds of the summer night. And this is the thing about living in a village like this one: they can have the TV as loud as they want, not worry about disturbing a soul - and so they turn off all the lights, squeeze together and let the sound fill the room, like their own little cinema, suspended halfway up in the night sky. Rika finds herself watching the moon more often than the movie itself, looming just beyond the window frame as it so often had as she sat and drank alone. From here, it doesn’t seem an adversary - more someone trying to peek into the room, join them, as if even the stars wanted a seat at their show.

Soon Satoko’s grabbed Hanyuu’s sweets from the fridge, is promising they’ll go and buy some more to nobody in particular, and Rika supposes they will, tomorrow, and smiles at the prospect. It’s a small room, and never has it seemed cosier than with the five of them crammed in side by side until there’s more joking and tickling going on than anything else, then play fighting, then Rena throwing someone halfway across the room for making some comment Rika doesn’t hear. 

Mion and Keiichi are still causing a racket some time later when Rena’s  _ shhhh _ rings out, louder than anything in the night, and for a moment everything freezes, because Rena can do that - but it’s just that Satoko’s lying on her lap, already snoring gently, clutching her dress.

 

When they turn the movie off, they find the moon’s giving enough light to make the futons back up together, and for Rika to tuck Satoko in before she settles beside her. It’s at this point that she explains: there’s two futons: her’s and Satoko’s, and the one her parents used to use that she had Kimiyoshi bring from her old house especially.

All significance of this - Rika retrieving something from the house for the first time since her parents’ death - is lost in the ensuing chaos, blanketed with a hush so as not to disturb Satoko. From Keiichi’s, “oh, I can sleep on the floor,” to Mion’s suggestion of tops and tails, to Rena’s supposing that they simply sleep together, to the decibel jumping considerably as she’s once again punching everyone in sight even though she’s the one guilty of the double entendre. Soon Rika’s breaking out her serious voice - the one she’s earned after hundreds of years - mostly to tell them to shut up before they wake Satoko, but also because what she’s learnt in that time is that she hates when people never pursue what they want, and make more of a fuss out of everything than need be.

Of course, she could also tell them there’s another futon in the cupboard - hers. But nobody’s so much as questioned that she sleeps with Satoko, and what this life has also taught her is that there are some people you’ll always have an inexhaustible affection for, and that what separates friends out from the rest of the crowd is that however many times you sigh and roll your eyes at them, you always want to help them out again in the end. And this time, when she tells them to just make do with one goddamn futon, the three chime in as one, like they’ve just been given a free pass to say it: “””Okay.”””

After that Rena and Mion go to bathe together, then Keiichi, and the sound of the water lulls her, and she buries her head in Satoko’s pillow, sleepily notes how she isn’t too warm even with the two of them squished together like this on a June eve.

She’s only half-tethered to the waking world when light fills the room briefly as Keiichi comes back in and the sounds begin in a steady succession - distant conversation, some last weak protests, begrudging noises, then the rustle of blankets. At long last, the room falls silent, but for the sounds of five people breathing.

 

Some indeterminate amount of time passes during which Rika realises this really is the first time they’ve done anything like this, then holds that thought, like a breath underwater, or the gasp you take when you come up, or like a phone off the hook, a conversation halted then pulled down into sleep. All the while she watches the moon through her eyelashes, then its glow on the floor - then she doesn’t understand light or dark any more, and she tunes back into the sounds of the other four lives in this single room and lets them rock her like a lullaby from before her memories began.

She’s barely there, in that world of the waking, when Rena speaks, impossibly quiet, impossibly clear: “This really is the first time we’ve done this, right?”

Nobody answers. Something flutters past the window and it moves across the floor, shadow dancing in the light.

“It’s so strange. It’s just all so strange. I really can’t believe…”

And she trails off, and soft night silence fills the spaces the words had left in the air, heavy with everything.

Because, what can’t she believe? That Keiichi’s only been here for a month? That the club was only made a year ago? That she’d only moved back to Hinamizawa then, that she’d ever moved away as a child? What can’t she believe, of this life, of them, here, now?

Rika believes, because believing is how you build your reality. But, more than that, as she lies there, she knows. The one thing fate could never take, and could never hide, no matter how many shadows flittered across the surface of its truth: they’re here. And so, everything was always going to be fine. Such simple truth, such obvious truth, everywhere, like light and oxygen, that as the years passed they more forgot it even as they lived within its very embrace. Rika could put these hundred years to rest here, now - if that was how long it had taken her to learn that much, then so be it.

 

As always, the conversation’s continued without her. She hears her friends whisper - they’d been too busy for this, Keiichi supposed. I’ve always wanted to do something like it, Mion admits. Her voice becomes a little wet as she talks about her childhood, how lonely it had been, then how she’d never imagined one day having something like this. Keiichi remarks on how he’d never have guessed she’d lived such a solitary life, that she’s such a natural at bringing people together - but didn’t they all do that? That’s Rena. Didn’t they all find each other? Who were they before this, anyway? What was anything, before the five of them found one another?

And then they’re whispering about Rika having fallen asleep. Rika, that’s her - and maybe she has. Still, behind her eyelids, the moon shines, and she wonders if you can be aware you’re dreaming. Wonders if she’s fallen asleep - knows all at once this could well be a very happy dream, and doesn’t fear it ending. Forgets her past as she falls deeper into the abyss, knows only of bright things, and that the sun will rise tomorrow on any number of truths about their here and now, and that every one of them will mean only happiness and peace. That much was out of fate’s hands, even out of hers - it was the unshakeable reality she lived in now, the light that always existed, as surely as the sun went to rest and was replaced by the stars, so long as you could look through the smog to see.

 

It’s when Satoko stirs beside her that she’s pulled back yet again, for just a moment, like falling onto something soft, because Keiichi and Mion and Rena are still whispering from their futon, words like moths, wings heavy with sleep yet beating against the night, not wanting to stop, weighing the night air, changing its shape -

“Can’t you guys go to bed? You can talk tomorrow. We’ve got forever.”

 

Yeah.

 

Maybe someone says it aloud, maybe its her mind, maybe nothing. Maybe all three, but it’s all the same anyway, sure as the brilliant moonlight spilling into the room, undisturbed by things of the night, and sure as the air they’re breathing. Truly, all the same thing. 

Yeah. They’ve got forever.

* * *

 

The first thing Rika feels is the cold air of dawn on her cheeks. When she opens her eyes, the silence is a blanket, blurring the boundary of reality and dream, welcoming her gently, gently. 

The sky is no colour. The end of night, the start of a new day, an expanse of forever. It’s clear, so clear, she realises, because they’d forgotten to ever close the windows the night before. They’re still pushed up, welcoming the new day into the room. Still, there’s no danger, no nothing - the five of them, the rest of existence and one of so many fresh starts to come. From where she lies, it’s like an open door to the sky.

 

Rika pulls her arms from their natural resting place, Satoko’s waist, stands. They fit together like two puzzle pieces, and she adjusts to her own body again as she wanders to the window, stands as the single person watching Hinamizawa welcome day. It occurs to her she doesn’t know what time it is, and equally that it doesn’t matter. She looks into the shades of the sky to see what she can divine, but the sun sleeps. Hinamizawa doesn’t care to give answers to such unimportant questions.

When she reaches to pull the windows shut, preserve the heat, she notices the goosebumps breaking out over her skin, shivers in her nightgown. She wonders what sunrise looks like in the city. She’s lived for a hundred years, but there’s still so much to learn.

She sees it when she turns to look back at the futons, in the moment before she shuts the blinds - the room is full of light, falling on her friends’ sleeping faces.

Somehow Rika doesn’t think the close quarters are the only reason Keiichi, Mion and Rena lie together as they do, Keiichi in the middle, the tangle of arms across his torso making it impossible to determine whose is whose. Under Mion and Rena’s resting heads are each of his arms, as is each of his hands on their shoulders. Not a comfortable position to sleep in surely - he would have terrible cramp later - and yet there they were, expressions as unmarred as lakes throwing back the light of sunrise. She enjoys it all for a moment longer before she pulls down the blinds at last and feels her way back to the futon, then Satoko’s arms.

As she’s falling asleep, she tells herself it’ll only be for a while - more wants to be close to her friend like this, and to let the indeterminate morning time flow by, perhaps slowed slightly by the passage of sleep. She’s already halfway there when she realises there’s no need for urgency - nowhere for her to be, nothing she particularly needs to do or worry about. She can’t even remember the date. It’s this realization that everything is fine that pulls the last curtains over the windows of her mind, allows her to drift, with no concerns as to when to wake, or what will wake her. What she does know is that it’ll be one of her friends that does it, and that’s all she needs to fall finally into sleep, a smile on her face.

Within this snatch of respite amidst the chaos that made this group, the chaos Rika had fallen in love with all those years ago and always held close, there is peace. The only sound in the shack is that of the air, moving slowly in and out of young lungs, unhastened, filling the room one breath at a time. Making it a home at last that they’ll return to for years to come, then move on to remember one day, when their childhoods are only memories of laughter and warmth, the things that may not erase pain, but will always win.

Outside, Hinamizawa learns to welcome dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> [the future spreads across the sky, let’s take up each other’s hands and fly away.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3l40YwSXEE)
> 
> consider this my tribute to my forever favourite series, to which i owe everything and more.


End file.
